Shiny well soul

Last night, I attended Noah’s Spring concert at the public middle school he attends. I usually enjoy these concerts immensely.

But before the concert began, I sat in my seat very tired, both physically and emotionally. The loss of Diana is a heavy reality, one that is making it hard to move my arms and legs. I haven’t been able to hear either, and I have missed most of what people are saying to me. Falling asleep seemed like my best bet.

Then came the moment when the curtain opened and the instruments reflected the light in a hundred different eye-catching flashes. The brass is always so shiny and exciting looking – and my attention was suddenly brought into sharp focus for the first time in over 24 hours. I even felt a moment of anticipation. What will I hear, now that I am listening?

And then, at his public school, Noah’s band began to play what was listed as “Hymnsong with Philip Bliss” in the program, but if you know your church music, you know it as, “It Is Well With My Soul.”

I was completely present for a moment, and that single flash of clarity reassured me that I will regain my hearing as the days pass. Smiling in the dark, I gave God props for His blessed tactics – tubas and truth.

It is well, it is well with my soul.

An ear to heaven

Every single night, for almost two years, my daughter has asked God to heal my friend Diana of her leukemia. He finally answered Mia's faithful prayer, because Diana died yesterday.

I have no doubt that Diana already has heaven on its ear. I hope God likes to play Scrabble and watch reruns of Dr. Who.

Thank you, God, for the extraordinary privilege of knowing and loving her. And Lord? I could use a little healing today too. Something feels broken.

Homemade cards and other reproach producing paper

I hope you had a great Mother’s Day. I recognize that it can be a tough day for some people. I had a friend who once told me that one of the hardest moments of the entire year for her is when she stands in the Hallmark store and tries to find a Mother’s Day card that is true.

I woke up yesterday and shortly after my daughter was leading me into a room to present me with a homemade card. It is gigantic, made on large size art paper, and here is what it says:

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY
I LOVE YOU
Let me name all the nice things about you…
Marvelous
Outstanding
Magnificent
You’re kind, sweet, you help us when we need it. You think of us first, you forgive us! But most of all you always have time for me and more.
Love, Mia xoxoxoxoxo

It was beautiful, but somehow it gave me the strangest feeling inside. I truly long to be all the things my daughter believes that I am, all the things she needs me to be. Did you ever read a card that way?

Fowl Quiz

Anybody know what kind of bird this is?

Be still

My friend Diana has been worthy of many a blog post here. Her antics are somewhat unmatched in my life for she is all craziness and fun and love and emotion. We have battled her cancer together, and it has been a long and strenuous road – yet not without laughter and really great moments.

Diana is loud and funny and over-reactive. Never shy about making a scene, I have heard her say outrageously kind and loving things to perfect strangers in elevators and watched her do extravagantly generous things for the people in her life. She is a force of nature, for sure, and God made her that way.

She is also one of my very dearest friends in the world.

On Tuesday, Diana had a heart attack after her bone marrow transplant last week. She is alive, on a ventilator, but remains unconscious. When her brother called to tell me, the world seemed very quiet all of a sudden.

God keeps reminding my heart to “Be still and know that He is God.” Not SIT still or FEEL still – but BE still – make stillness a part of the essence of me through His abiding presence in my very person. Stillness and sadness are familiar friends in the Kingdom - kind of like death and new life.

Diana has a signed DNR. I do not know what that means for the days ahead, but as my friend lies in her bed very, very still, I will join her in my spirit.

Fifty words or less

My friend mentioned to me at work today that there were a lot of obituaries in the local paper today. Obituaries are fascinating things aren’t they? I always read them – sometimes before the headlines.

Summing up one’s life in a few paragraphs is a great exercise for the living, but is usually only done for the dead. Information about clubs, education, family members, hobbies and religious affiliations are all crammed into 50 words or less, but often what is not said is even more telling.

My husband has this theory that as the generations pass, your life gets summed up in one sentence by your great-grandchildren. For instance, since he is 6’7”, Steve predicts that his great-grandchildren will say, “He was tall.”

I was fortunate enough to have my great-grandmother with me until I was 40. Her name was Hannah and I wouldn’t know where to start to tell you about how great she was. It would require far more than one sentence. The verse that she used to pray was III John 2 & 4, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth….I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

Let me sum her up: Hannah walked in truth.

I wonder what my great-grandchildren will say?

Same old, same new

If you’re visiting the blog for the first time today, you have not been privy to my gruesome house stories. You’re blessed, believe me. Suffice it to say, I have had oil and water problems downstairs that have caused quite an adventure.

The problems have also forced me to clean up. Part of the problem took place in the furnace room that held a lot more junk than furnace. Now that I can finally move things back into place, it has proved to be the perfect occasion to sort through all the stuff I have been moving from place to place for 25 years but haven’t looked at.

I have found some pretty interesting stuff – some funny, some sad, some too embarrassing to discuss (even for me). One thing I uncovered were the journals I kept while in London.

Smiling as I opened them up, I recalled how faithfully I wrote it all down, not wanting to forget a single moment of my time there. There were pages and pages of musings and memories and QUESTIONS. So, right in the middle of the clutter I was supposed to be organizing, I sat down for a read.

I am sort of please to tell you that the questions I had in the late 80s are different than the questions I have today – well, most of them anyway. And yet, I discovered that I am still the same in many ways. Some excerpts as examples:

“Starting tomorrow I begin living on rolls, old crackers, flat Coke and anything I can get Cindy to pay for.” Cindy was my roommate. I have never had money in my pocket, thus my husband’s insistence on keeping the checkbook.

Then there’s this one:

“Deserving comment is Andy’s first sexual experience. Apparently, the couple in the flat next to ours just got married. Andy keeps waking everyone up, telling us to listen. How he will function as a normal adult someday is beyond me.” Last I heard, Andy is married with 3 kids. Guess I was wrong about the normal adult thing.

One of my favorites was:

“Sometimes I’m afraid I’m not bright. I’m afraid I sound as ridiculous as some people sound to me, and I just don’t know it.” A classic, huh?

Yet I did discover some moments when God was growing me up. Moments like:

“It is truly wonderful when you become so comfortable with someone that you can scratch your butt in front of her. That’s how I feel with Cindy. Heavens knows we’re different! She’s the planful [sic] bossy sophisticate. I’m the disorganized dreaming bum. It pisses her off when I get an A without studying. It pisses me off when she tries to mother me. But she NEEDS to organize, to KNOW and to instruct. She feels important and needed by me if she’s showing me the way. So, because I love her, I let her tell me, even if I am already quite aware of the proper direction I should be taking. On the other hand, she sits through all my performances and gives me honest critique. She will stay up all night and help me memorize lines that I procrastinated learning. And even though she says, ‘I told you so’ and I say, ‘Get off my case’ – we stick with each other. It’s friendship for real.”

Twenty years later, I have found better words than “pisses” to express my feelings of relational frustration, but I am still trying to choose the harder, more narrow path of real love and community. Even when it ticks me off.

Achoo Swine Flu

Talk about the swine flu is everywhere, huh? I’ll admit, wherever I go, people are chatting about it - especially if someone sneezes. We are on the alert, in the height of allergy season. I am not making light of what is happening in Mexico City, though, because I have no doubt it is frightening and anxiety-producing.

What I am most amazed about it is how fast bad news travels. We live in a world of global mass media and high speed everything, don’t we? I sit absolutely dumbfounded about the many communication tools we use to disseminate a message almost instantaneously – and nearly everybody gets the message.

Good news doesn’t travel as fast. The word Gospel, the name we use to describe the life and ministry and MESSAGE of Jesus, (as in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the gospels) literally means Good News. Even though the message began with one man and spread to the whole world, it wasn’t exactly quick and I would suggest it still isn’t – and shouldn’t be.

Another profound way that the movement of Christ is counter-cultural is that it requires real time and investment. If you are a follower of Christ, I think it is critical that you understand this for many reasons. Sometimes Christians make sweeping statements about the current culture, criticizing relativism and secularism (you know the drill) but there are other, more subtle ways that we can be tripped up. When everything around us happens quickly, we become quick.

Last Friday night, I heard a young pastor speak. I wanted to jump up and cheer as I heard him talk about his ministry and his people. Years ago, he was watching Oprah (yeah, that scary new age influential brainwashing superhero) and God spoke to Him. Oprah was talking about her work in Africa – AIDS relief and education – which she and Bono pioneered and the world (including the church) followed. The young pastor was so impressed by the individual stories of suffering, that he decided to talk to his congregation about it.

They began travelling to Africa. He said it this way, “We did not go to ‘take Jesus to them.’ We knew Jesus was already there, so we went in a posture of learning and humility, wondering if there was any way we could help.” I usually say it this way – God is already present, ask Him how you can cooperate with what He is already doing. Helps Christians rethink the troubling crusader mentality, huh?

Anyway, the pastor and his people have been going back and forth ever since, partnering with Africans to form a non-profit organization, Zimele, that has now assisted thousands of people with AIDS and their children. The pastor said, “I feel like it’s my second home,” and he is of Asian descent!

Their work is not quick and no one in the global mass media has noticed. It must be really, really good news.

Friday Chews

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

Robert Orben

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest", 1982

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.

Doris Egan, House M.D., House vs. God, 2006